


Easier to Go

by LittleBirdMan



Category: half life but the ai is self aware
Genre: Oneshot, Other, Trans Gordon, but its okay because we're coping with meteora like grown men okayyyy?, gordon has problems. many problems, i listened to a live version of a linkin park album and i got ideas., introspective(?), its not outright said but always assume if im writing he is trans. ty, oc (there if only by name), semi not a game, trans gordon freeman (its very important to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28789125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleBirdMan/pseuds/LittleBirdMan
Summary: An inspection of Gordon Freeman's life and his connection to Linkin Park
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Easier to Go

**Author's Note:**

> howdy! i dont typically post what i write, but i was haunted by this and by god if i dont share this with people i will explode. this was written in one sitting and without a beta so i apologize if there's any glaring errors! i hope u enjoy me projecting a little bit onto our favorite orange man! have a good time! :]
> 
> rated teen just because i dont know how to stop saying the word fuck, no other reason! no worries friends.

The first time he hears it, there is no fanfare. He wouldn’t be able to tell you now what age he was, or what exactly he’d been doing at the time, but it would remain something as a cornerstone for him.

His mother never really liked listening to the car radio - she’d had all the music that they played on the station she liked on tape, anyways, and she could just pop it into the tape player - so he was at the whims of his mother’s taste in music. Not that he could really complain; there was something about the heavy guitar and drums that made something in his chest buzz, and even if he didn’t know the words, it wasn’t for lack of trying. His lap would become a mini drumset for him in his child seat, and his mother would laugh at how into it he would get. 

Freeman was too young to know what bands it was he was listening to, and frankly, he didn’t care. He just knew he liked it. 

There was a specific tape that always made something in his brain do something akin to cartwheels, though. The singer’s lighter, kind of whiny, voice was something that called to him. He liked the mechanical sort of noises in the background, the way that some of the tracks flowed into one another. The harmony of it all.   
  
Freeman couldn’t tell you the first time that he’d heard Linkin Park, but there was a reason that it became a pillar of his existence. After all, sometimes things from when you’re younger stay with you forever.

His taste in music stuck mostly to what his mother listened to, even after the divorce, and as he got older, and could understand a few more of the lyrics, he wondered idly if his mother was truly okay. After all, one does not listen to music like Papa Roach and Three Days Grace in the presence of a kid if there’s not something going on. Or, maybe she just never realized that he’d remember it, young as he was. Either way, it was certainly something that Freeman thought about off and on throughout his life.

Middle school rolled around, and after a night of just fucking around on the family computer, he realized that his mother had ripped some of her CDs to the hard drive. For Freeman, who was starting to pay more attention to things like artists and what albums he liked, it was like heaven opened up and he could just saunter on in. 

Equipped with only the world’s shittiest pair of headphones, Freeman worked through his mother’s collection, pinpointing the ones that he remembered from his childhood that he’d never had the name for, writing down and making note of it in a ragged black notepad. This is where Gordon Freeman finally, officially, meets Linkin Park again. Hearing songs that had meant a lot to him when he was younger - songs that he could semi-babble along to with his mother on roadtrips - made his heart ache. He made himself his own little playlist, and whenever he came home from school, he’d trot himself to the computer and bust out his homework and some very good Linkin Park. 

It made some things easier, the comfort of familiarity. Middle schoolers aren’t very kind now, and back then they absolutely weren’t. Freeman was someone who stood out a bit - not having the name Gordon yet, and he often felt out of place in the grand scheme of things. It was easy to pick on the kid who’s best friends in school was the librarian and the teachers, nose stuck in a book and that notepad always being written in. 

So he could find solace, one Christmas, when he was gifted an MP3 player. He immediately got his most important songs on there, and it felt like something clicked into place. Whenever he didn’t want to be in the family room, he could hole himself up in his room with his homework spread against his mattress and his mp3 playing the Meteora album to block out his thoughts. He could even sneak it to school and it’d help, if only a little bit.

Gordon got older. Found himself, his name (after a few tries and a few too many trips to the baby name section of the local library), and found himself excelling further in school than he’d expected. Sure, he knew he was smart - it was a focal point of his personality for him at that point - but the idea that he could actually do something with it seemed like something out of his hands. Yet, he was able to skip a year in highschool. He was immediately accepted into MIT with a thesis that separated himself from his peers in a not-too unfamiliar way. And still his shitty playlist stuck with him, downloaded to a different device at this point. 

College was, understandably, fucking difficult. If he tried some atrocities in the face of god in the form of energy drink concoctions and went more than a few days of sleep a week, that was between him and his playlist. There was always a single earbud in. Even if the music he’d grown such a strong attachment to were old, it was still something that brought him comfort and soothed his brain. If he ever needed something stronger, he’d strap himself into his fucked up little station wagon and start blasting Hybrid Theory as he streaked down the highway.    
  
It was the little things.

Of course, once he got accepted into Black Mesa, he wasn’t quite able to do that sort of thing anymore. It was a professional environment, and he wouldn’t be allowed to have his music on him. He’d even heard some people got their mp3s or iPods confiscated - which sounded so much like middle school he just about had a fit - so he didn’t want to risk it. He’d lived in the Black Mesa dorms for a bit, which was changed when Joshua came about.

Ah, Joshua.

See Joshua wasn’t planned. Gordon and his friend hadn’t been in a relationship at a time, just fooling around, so finding that they were going to have a kid was. Well, it was certainly not what they were expecting. Gordon and his friend - Lucky - decided to get a place together. Black Mesa, for all the money that he made there, was no place to raise a kid, and Gordon was planning on keeping the kid. He’d honestly hoped to adopt a little later on in life, but fuck it, if he was gonna have a kid, then he wasn’t just gonna say  _ no _ . 

So, the kid comes into the world, Gordon has to take a break, and he’s allowed some space to listen to his own music in his own place whenever he gets a chance. He pays mind to listen to the… Well. Not that there’s kinder songs from Linkin Park, but perhaps the ones that aren’t so depressing. He makes himself a whole different playlist, one to wake up in the morning to, ones that he think little Joshie might like because they were ones that  _ his _ mother had listened to when she was in a good mood. 

It helped with the stress, certainly, and he was thankful that Lucky was willing to room with him to help take care of the kid. After all, they were friends, and Gordon hadn’t expected Lucky to stick around for the kid. Lucky had actually left Black Mesa to work as a researcher somewhere else so that they would have more time with Joshua when Gordon wasn’t able to get out of work at a reasonable time.

When he had to go through Black Mesa for the last time, when the world turned to shit, he was thankful that there was someone with Joshua. Knowing his son was safe helped keep him sane. So, instead of worry for his son, the thing that haunted him was the ridiculous (and almost laughable) thought that he definitely wished he had his tunes with him. Sometimes he thought he heard music when he was going through the facility, but when none of the others heard it (sans the Dr. Feelgood incident) he decided it was just his brain trying to fix the stress.

Gordon wished that he could’ve gotten out of the Resonance Cascade and the Black Mesa Meltdown scott free, but he wasn’t lucky enough for that. He was thankful that he was able to come home to his family.    
  
But, ridiculous man that he was, as soon as he was able to get out of the hospital and do so safely, he insisted that he get his car back - still that stupid station wagon, a little more rusty than it was in college - and he took himself on a drive. It was difficult, doing it with a new prosthetic hand\, but he was too stubborn to be swayed from it.   
  
And Meteora welcomed him. His mother’s old tape that she’d given him (read: he stole after a particularly bad fight and then never gave back for reasons he can’t remember) may have been a bit beat up, but the faithful thing didn’t skip, and the tones welcomed him back. It was easy to feel disconnected after the events he’d gone through a month or two ago, and quite honestly it was scary how quick his brain defaulted to dissociating, but the familiar sound of Linkin Park anchored him. Just like when he was younger, he screamed along with the tracks, fighting back the wobble in his chest, the ache in his eyes. 

He did do his best to drive, but he did end up pulling off the side of the highway, sitting on the hood with Chester Bennington blaring from his ‘evil and fucked up’ speakers. Though tears flowed steadily down his face, there was a small smile on his face. The comfort the songs brought him was honestly ridiculous to him - and he felt silly just feeling better about it - but he was here. 

Of course, he’d have to go back to the house in one piece, and he’d have to make sure the volume in the car was turned down so he didn’t scare himself in the morning when he met up with the Science Team to figure out where to go from here, but for now, for this moment, he was allowed to simply exist. He, and his Linkin Park. And that was enough.

In a way, he was already home.

**Author's Note:**

> hi there! thank you so much for getting this far, and i really hope you enjoyed something that was written spur-of-the-moment! i dont get to finish a lot of my projects, but this one possessed me. linkin park is very important to me, and i have so many thoughts constantly about them and gordon's connection to them. 
> 
> i hope you have a lovely day/night, and thanks again for reading!


End file.
